Retro Review - Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom
Dungeons & Dragons is one of the most important roleplaying franchises in history, for several generations it has been part of many people's childhood, there are many products derived from this franchise, so it is not surprising that in 1993 (just the year I was born) they created a video game based on this universe. And of course, being the Beat'Em Up genre very fashionable in those years, it was logical that they would develop a videogame with these mechanics, luckily, it resulted in a quite funny title.
As I've said countless times when I do reviews of a game of this genre and is that as far as the plot is concerned always goes unnoticed, because usually in the Beat'Em Up the story is very simple, because these games are focused on its playability and in many cases, like this particular game, in its graphics, so we are once again in front of a Beat'Em Up with a very simple plot, but that serves us to learn the basic events of this adventure.
Logically, Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom takes us to a medieval fantasy world, where magic, monsters, warriors, wizards and any other magical creature live together. We are in the kingdom of Dorakin, whose inhabitants live in peace and harmony until one day a horde of monsters began to cause chaos and destruction in their surroundings, so the person in charge of this kingdom, seeing that these attacks did not seem random, but these creatures were sent to attack the kingdom, decides to seek help to solve this problem.
This is when our protagonists come into play. As is classic in this genre of games, we will have four protagonists, each with different characteristics and skills, even different races, among them we have a: Crassus the warrior, Lucia the elf, Dimsdale the dwarf and Greldon the cleric. These four courageous heroes will have to face a whole horde of enemies through a series of scenarios, having the opportunity to choose different paths to advance, until they reach the Tower of Doom, where Deimos, a cadaverous mage who is behind all attacks on the kingdom, is found.
Graphically it's quite a colorful game, which visually is quite striking, a feature that being a medieval fantasy game fits very well. The designers of Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom knew how to create scenarios with a good amount of detail and recreate very well locations like: castles, dungeons, forests and any other typical medieval environment in the most appropriate way, it is worth noting that in terms of the background of the scenarios are very few that have animations, and although most are quite static, is thanks to the good artistic style, design and drawing that makes every place we go (at least in most scenarios), despite not having animations, are full of life, and that is also thanks to the good use of the palette of bright colors. Although it is also worth noting that the scenarios have depth, being an aspect that helps a lot to the showiness.
The designs of the main characters, in spite of having quite classic designs as far as the fantasy-medieval theme is concerned, these present designs that are very much on par with the settings, in the same way these have a quite lively colour palette, making an excellent combination with the whole environment, in addition to the fact that the set of animations and movements is very varied and moves with a certain naturalness (taking into account the limitations).
The visual effects such as magic powers and illuminations stand out a lot, being in many cases a visual spectacle, which is necessary for a game of this style and above all for its theme where the magic is the central axis.
The sound aspect of Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom, unfortunately is not on par with its graphic aspect, in itself, it doesn't have a bad soundtrack, but compared to other games in the same genre it is not on par in this aspect, or at least being a game with the reputation that the Dungeons & Dragons franchise has, I expected a really good soundtrack, but it is not. Despite that, the tunes that we'll be able to find in this adventure decently fulfill its purpose. On the other hand, the sound effects are a bit better done, they sound great and some sound effects in particular are blunt.
Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom is, as it was very common at that time, a very conventional Beat'Em Up, let's remember that this genre of videogames was very fashionable years ago, all this thanks to the arcades, therefore this videogame has all the main and typical characteristics of those games, still, despite the saturation of videogames of this genre, this particular one turned out to be a quite funny title.
As every good Beat'Em Up, our main task will be to go through a series of scenarios defeating all our enemies in order to advance to the next scenario and keep defeating enemies, until we reach a final boss. To perform this task our characters will have items that help us to defeat our enemies in different ways, this game has a good arsenal of attack items such as: daggers and hammers that we can throw to those enemies who want to attack us, we can also find or buy in the store scrolls containing different types of powers.
But we can also find or buy the typical items that cure our lives. Moreover, in the purest style of the RPG genre, our characters will be able to level up and improve their stats thanks to the use of items, so that we can increase our character's strength or speed.
As I mentioned in the beginning, Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom has 4 characters available and they are:
Crassus: This character has the role of being the fighter of the group, is the typical character with characteristics that compared to his other companions has more balanced stats. He uses sword and shield with which he is able to defend himself from certain attacks.
Lucia: This character is of the elf race and as it is common in characters of this race and also, as it is common in characters of the female gender in games of this gender, she has a lot of agility, so she is very fast in terms of movement and attack. But their attacks and life points are not very high.
Dimsdale: As a good dwarf, this character plays the role of being the character that in terms of attack, is the one that causes the most damage, but that makes him a character with little mobility, he moves very slow, but instead his attacks cause many points of damage when he makes a single attack.
Greldon: He is the cleric of the group, so his skills are based on healing. He also has other magic skills, but his best skill is the one mentioned before, so we could consider this character as the one who plays the role of the "tank" of the group, because besides being able to resist many attacks due to his skill, he is a character of the same way, slow in movement and attack.
It's incredible how many games of the Beat'Em Up genre there are in the industry, Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom is just one of many and throughout these 3 years I have made reviews of the most classic to the most unknown and I still have many more to do. In a few days I'll be reviewing a pretty classic Beat'Em Up, but with regard to its graphic aspect and artistic style I like it very much. As for Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom, despite its shortcomings, it's really a very enjoyable title, with good mechanics and with a quite remarkable graphic aspect.
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